 
Detroitnerd
Member
Username: Detroitnerd
Post Number: 1799
Registered: 07-2004
| | Posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 4:42 pm: |    |
Let's see. Just because the alley is gone doesn't mean the city doesn't still have "easement" rights that it can claim, right? So you can fence it off, but you can't build on it; at least that's what was explained to me.
Seems weird that our idea of progress is putting the trash and freight traffic in front of our homes.
In the 1970s, the speed limit in Dearborn alleys was posted around 10 mph, but it might have been even lower, maybe 5 mph. We lived right behind Greenfield Road on a commercial strip, so we still had our alley when our neighbors off the strip no longer had one. We kids would play in it, but we'd also sometimes hurl a brick against a business' window because we were so crummy!
I think that's the main complaint about alleys: Security. My Hamtramck-Detroit alley is a dead-end, so anybody going in has to escape by the same way. It doesn't have nearly as much criminal potential as the alley across the street that opens both ways. My neighbor had the eave troughs and downspout stolen off his garage, and a few break-ins in the back window. I wouldn't live on that side of the street without fortifying the back at least with a very prickly bush.
But I miss alleys. I like that they recognize that not everything should move through a neighborhood at high speed and directly in front. |
Fareastsider
Member
Username: Fareastsider
Post Number: 781
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Thursday, January 17, 2008 - 10:27 pm: | |
Yes once an alley is vacated it is then an Easement. at least that was the case in Detroit. |
Reddog289
Member
Username: Reddog289
Post Number: 215
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 - 2:08 am: | |
one more alley memory then i,ll shut up, my two uncles idea of babysitting was to put me on the garbage can rack, give me an ice cream ,then play catch, different part of detroit same deal me eating ice cream in the alley. |
Screamingfit
Member
Username: Screamingfit
Post Number: 34
Registered: 03-2006
| | Posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 - 8:03 am: | |
Riding a bicycle from Ferndale to Royal Oak up Woodward is made much easier and safer by using the alleys.
I'm pretty hardcore when it comes to riding bikes in traffic but riding on Woodward is just asking to be killed. |
Rfban
Member
Username: Rfban
Post Number: 249
Registered: 02-2004
| | Posted on Friday, January 18, 2008 - 10:00 am: | |
"I think that's the main complaint about alleys: Security."
I always advocated making alleys gated w/electronic gates that opened to all of the residents and service workers needing access.
This would help maintain security without being a gated community—kind of like a large shared backyard. Most likely, this area, after installing the system would become a very beautiful yet functional place. In the end, it would be safer for everybody without having to sacrifice the beloved alley. |
Sumas
Member
Username: Sumas
Post Number: 1
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 - 10:31 am: | |
I have great memories of Alleys. We played in them all the time. A neighbor worked for DPW and we were graded every year and got fresh gravel. He thought he owned it all and would chase us away. Another neighbor would burn trash in the alley. It was legal then. He smoked and bought his packs out of machines. In those days, your change was taped to the pack. His incinerated pennies bought a lot of candy for neighbor kids.
In the sixties and seventies the City encouraged alley closures. They do retain an easement. It takes a petition with I think a hundred percent agreement of the block. A house we owned, we did't sign because our garage access was from the alley. Instead we got 4 family dumpsters. It was so convenient. We could take our garbage out any time instead of remembering to roll it out on trash day. |
Sumas
Member
Username: Sumas
Post Number: 2
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 - 10:53 am: | |
Remembered one more thing, There was a rag man with a horse and wagon still working in Grosse Pointe Park in the Fifties into about the mid Sixties. My churches Sunday School faced the alley and we would see him every Sunday morning. It thrilled me every time. Also we would visit Wyandotte to see my great Aunt and Uncle (brother and sister) who lived in the house their parents built. The alley was like walking down a country lane. Most houses on the street still had barns converted into garages. |
Rfban
Member
Username: Rfban
Post Number: 250
Registered: 02-2004
| | Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 - 11:20 am: | |
I have a paved, lighted alley right now, but the city only picks up our rollable cans in the front--talk about progress. My kitchen is in the rear and 90% of my trash comes from the kitchen as with most, I would assume? Problem is I have to drag all of my garbage, through my dinning room, down a long hallway, then through my living room, foyer and down the steps. I absolutely hate doing this! Do you like dragging nasty garage though almost the entire contents of you home!-no. My tangent is done now; I will only say that it was smarter to remove your trash in the rear—that’s why alleys exist. |
Buyamerican
Member
Username: Buyamerican
Post Number: 296
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Saturday, January 19, 2008 - 11:26 am: | |
We used to call the man with the horse and wagon the "sheeny man". Back then, politically correct wasn't a problem like it is today.
|
Hamtragedy
Member
Username: Hamtragedy
Post Number: 56
Registered: 10-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 1:01 am: | |
Grandfather grew up on St Jean & Kercheval, my dad at Anderdon and Charlevoix, both talked about the sheeny man. What did he collect? What the heck does that mean? |
Buyamerican
Member
Username: Buyamerican
Post Number: 299
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 9:09 am: | |
I grew up in the Montclair, Vernor and Kercheval area as well.
The sheeny man collected stuff that people put in the alleys to be picked up by the City sanitation dept. I think he was considered a gypsy of sorts. I remember he was always nice to us kids but he always looked like his clothes hadn't been cleaned for weeks. His old horse looked like it was on it's last leg...but it was always friendly. We used to take it carrots or apples. |
Bearinabox
Member
Username: Bearinabox
Post Number: 500
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 2:58 pm: | |
quote:What the heck does that mean? I believe "sheeny" is a derogatory term for a Jewish person. How it came to be applied to a guy with a horse and wagon who collected junk in alleys, I couldn't say. |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3624
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 4:10 pm: | |
Junk/resale/salvage dealers were often Jewish in the old days. I think that a lot of kids didn't know that "sheeny man" referred to a Jewish person. |
Buyamerican
Member
Username: Buyamerican
Post Number: 300
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 5:23 pm: | |
I certainly didn't know that "sheeny man" was a derogatory term. I thought sheeny meant junk! I know that I have fond memories of those years. Not only the sheeny man, but the ice man as well. |
Flanders_field
Member
Username: Flanders_field
Post Number: 49
Registered: 01-2008
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 - 5:45 pm: | |
Our alley in Detroit took a huge dip in the center of our block, and my father claimed it was due to the old Conner Creek that flowed thru the area, before the houses were built in the 30s and 40s...
We would cover the alley sewer drain there with newspapers, and the snowmelt and rain would create a mini-pond that would often freeze solid enough for us neighborhood kids to iceskate on in the winter.
There were so many cool and unusual areas in the alleys, some people kept their portion as neat as their yards, others had vegetable or flower gardens, a few had small greenhouses attached to the back of their garages. We would also get large cardboard boxes and wooden crates in the alleys behind commercial buildings to make backyard forts with.
My friends and I would often walk the neighborhood alleys for long distances,even at night back in the 60s and 70s, but now I would not want to walk the street sidewalks there in broad daylight now. |
Oladub
Member
Username: Oladub
Post Number: 103
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - 9:48 am: | |
When my grandparents moved from Beniteau, opposite Foch, in the early fifties, a junk man loaded his sheeny cart with 2x4's and other things that weren't worth the move. My Dad, Uncle, and the junk man filled his cart in the alley. He provided a useful service. Those old horses they used moved pretty slow.
Does anyone know how the sheeny cart horses were cared for? Zoning doesn't usually allow horses to be kept in the city.
I only remember black junk men on the East Side in the 50's. Some of the milk delivery wagons still used horse carts in the early 50's also. The milk delivery guys were white - just like Milky. |
Edziu
Member
Username: Edziu
Post Number: 24
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 - 7:01 pm: | |
We did a lot of beer drinking as kids in the alleys of Hamtramck. Bought our GIQ's at a store on Cardoni near the Hamtramck border, then cruised the alleys. Once in a while the cops busted us, but just took our beer spilled it out and told us to get the hell out of there or they would tell our folks. It was difficult to severely injure yourself in an auto accident because the speed limit in the city was 25-35MPH with lots of stop signs and short blocks.
Alleys were also good places to shoot rats and pigeons with our BB guns. It is also where I first learned to drive in the late 50's and early 60's.
Hamtramck was a nice place to grow up and probably still is. |
Dave70
Member
Username: Dave70
Post Number: 27
Registered: 08-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008 - 6:27 am: | |
We're preparing to leave Hamtramck. We moved here 10 years ago and since then it has gotten a LOT seedier.
Crime wave this month: First someone broke the windows attempting to get into our neighbor's garage. Next, within two weeks I had my car stolen and my next door neighbor's house was broken into and cleaned out. The robbery was made easier because of our alley btw.
I see more riff raff passing by with each year.
Also a friend of mine that knows a Hamtown police officer says there recently have been car jackings at the Conant/Caniff intersection, right down the street from us. 
(Message edited by Dave70 on January 24, 2008) |
Edziu
Member
Username: Edziu
Post Number: 25
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008 - 1:26 pm: | |
Dave
With such small, compact neighborhoods, how can someone not hear or see something? The houses are 8 feet apart with garages 20 feet away from the house and no back yard to speak of. The streets are so narrow you could spit across, and the houses are a few feet from the street. Alleys are narrower yet. Is there some sort of a neighborhood watch?
There was crime in the 60's also, but it was hard to get something past eagle eye Sophie next door or nosy Stanley across the alley. Someone was always sitting on their front porch or in their garage working on a car, etc. |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 203
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008 - 2:06 pm: | |
I had glorified and dignified, in previous posts, my beloved second home/homes, THE ALLEYS! As public as they may have appeared, they were the very private enclave of us children. Yes, rats, garbage and a myriad of other fascinations gave us our excitements from morning to night. If you never had an alley, you missed an education of imagination and self reliance. |
Tponetom
Member
Username: Tponetom
Post Number: 204
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008 - 2:15 pm: | |
A footnote to BuyAmerican above:
We called him "Mr." Sheeney Man and we respected him. It was never considered to be derogatory. We also called Doctors, the "Sawbones." No disrespect intended. (Circa 1930's and 40's.)
It was, of course, a different world. |
Joeyp1982
Member
Username: Joeyp1982
Post Number: 13
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 24, 2008 - 2:20 pm: | |
I lived off Warren and Greenfield and their alleys were awful....if you took greenfield one block north of warren theres a street right past the gas station where there was an alley...ive been jumped over a handful of times over there...the population is 50 percent black and 50 percent arab...its a mean ghetto part of town... |
Luckycar
Member
Username: Luckycar
Post Number: 70
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Sunday, January 27, 2008 - 9:16 am: | |
My zadie,(zayda)yiddish for grandfather,was a sheeney man.Raised a family of five boys after my bubbie,or yiddish for grandmother, died in 1930.We lived on Greenfield between Outer Drive and 7 Mile across from the park,Patterson?,Peterson?Someo ne stole our sand box one night.It was wood and metal with benches at each end,and a canopy on top.I WANT IT BACK.They dragged it out thru the alley.This was 1960. |
Hamtragedy
Member
Username: Hamtragedy
Post Number: 62
Registered: 10-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 1:15 am: | |
Edziu, Hamtramck may not be as on the look-out now as much as it was then. My block is cool, a block from the prairie across Carpenter, and there's 3rd and 4th generation home ownership. (the 3rd & 4th generation hill-billies are the next block over). There are no foreclosures, the rentals seem to hold their own, and so do the gardens, including the ones on the alley.
But man, this is not a friendly town. Detroit was friendly, at least in the 70s & 80s, and for my naive paper boy comment, it still could have been that transplanted southern thang. But Hamtragic is one of those downright cold, just put your head down and keep on walkin' kinda towns, and I STILL greet people. As a result, if someone calls for help, (as someone did), loud enough for half the block to hear it, you'd think someone would open the door and look. Dream on. Punk kids down the block...I make it a point to let them know I know who they are. But most people won't even acknowledge them, and when something happens, well no one wants to get involved. Period.
Unless you're on a good block, just like the rest of Detroit, and one of the many you'll never hear about.
....as for that mean ghetto part of town??? |
Gsgeorge
Member
Username: Gsgeorge
Post Number: 568
Registered: 08-2006
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 3:33 am: | |
A familiar alley near Eastern Market. This vestige of the old city just missed being demolished for Lafayette Park.
|
Drifterlee
Member
Username: Drifterlee
Post Number: 25
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, January 29, 2008 - 3:54 am: | |
"This one is going to date me...but...I remember the trash man on a horse drawn wagon coming down our alley on Fordham near 7 & Gratiot on about a monthly basis. He'd blow his horn to let people know that he was coming in case anyway had scrap to sell to him. This was in the 40's and very early 50's. For kids it was a great opportunity to sell him scrap metal that we'd collected from new construction sites to get enough to buy candy at the neighborhood grocery store. The alley also was an alternative playground for neighborhood kids...it flooded behind our home every winter which provided my first skating rink where I could use my Christmas clamp-on double runners."
I grew up at 8 mile and Dequindre. We used to go "Alley Picking", Meaning looking for good stuff people threw away. That was 40 years ago. I loved those alleys. They were fun places back then. |
Goblue
Member
Username: Goblue
Post Number: 1050
Registered: 03-2007
| | Posted on Thursday, January 31, 2008 - 10:43 pm: | |
Drifterlee: Yup, "alley picking" was a part of our ongoing activity too...I really don't recall ever finding anything of real value...but it was worth checking...that was 60 years ago.
I don't know what "sheeny man" meant...but it is interesting to note that the junk men in the alley with horse drawn wagons were all Black on Fordham Street...while the ice man and the milk man out front with horse drawn wagons were all White. I wonder where all of those horses were stabled? They weren't exactly a bunch of Kentucky Derby winners! |
Jgavrile
Member
Username: Jgavrile
Post Number: 30
Registered: 09-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 12:52 am: | |
The alleys were great. They were used for good activities and bad. Growing up in Highland Park in the 50's the alleys were as clean as the streets. They cleaned them every week after picking up the garbage. they used a neat 3 wheeled dumpster that had as scoop on the front and they scrapped clean the alleys.We used them for everything you can imagine.They were even lit like the streets. We played baseball in the alley, You had to learn to hit line drives or else if you hit the ball into a yard. You were out. We use to chip in and buy a new softball from Fromm's Hardware. Then we would bring it home and un-stich it to pull some of the stuffing out of it. Then we would get someone's Mom to re-sew it . This made the ball a little more mushy, and would keep it from going a long distance. In the alley ,you didn't want to chase a ball half way down the length of a block if someone missed the catch or hit a long high ball. It was too much chasing, so the mushy ball worked pretty good. As to hitting it into a yard.,there were some old coots that were such buttholes, they would lock the gate with a chain and padlock and then grease the top of the fence rail. This was supposed to keep us out? Lots of good fruit to pick in all those yards. Apples, pears, cherries, peaches,plums.Man it was great.
We used one of the sewer grates as home plate and then would try and find flat articles to use as the pitcher mound, and basses. Usually the light poles were one base or another.
We also played basketball, by attaching a backboard and net to the top portion of a garage wall above the door oppening.or to the light pole.
In the winter ,we would use two bushel baskets burried in the snow ,sideways as goals for hockey. We would shovel extra snow onto the area for the hockey and glaze it down, so the puck would glide around. No skates, just our street shoes. Neighbors who had to drive through the alley to get to their garages, didn't like that too well.
Halloween was always fun, as the garbage cans were sitting usually on stands, either wood or metal. We would take some good twine and tie opposite sides of the alley cans together and stretch the twine across the alley proper. When someone came home late from their night shift at the factory and drove through the alley to get to their garage, well, they would snag the twine with their car bumper or grille and jerk the cans off of the stands and make a terrible racket. This would set off all the dogs that were kept outside in the yards and all hell would brake loose for about half an hour .
The alley is where we would drive out motor scooter and motor bikes along with home made derby cars. It was a safe place for kids to play and not be in traffic. Roller skating without the crack in the sidewalk, you could skate for long distances on a relatively smooth surface. Mock battles using garbage can lids and swords made of scrap wood. Better yet we would drag home some refrigerator boxes with the re-enforced framing of wood with cardboard stapled to it. Man this made for some great forts. The alleys were so clean, that we never seemed to have any rats like in some places.
I remember that my Grandmother lived over near Mt. Carmel hospital(6 mile and Schaefer) and those alleys over there were all dirt basically. On top of that, Detroit had the cement garbage containers, that for some reason, rats loved to get into.Some bright bulb in Detroit thought that this design was good for keeping rats out,and they were greatly mistaken.Those rats had the whole alley excavated with tunnels. I remember when I would go over there for the weekend and I would hang around with the kids in that neighborhood and we would go on rat patrols with sticks and whatever we could find. We would get old broomhandles or rake handles and pound a nail into the end, then we would sharpen the head of the nail into a point. This made a hell of a spear and was really deadly to a rat.If you saw a rat go into one of those cement container, you would quickly slam the metal doors shut on it and then take a stick and poke it through a slight oppening in one of the upper doors and you could hear them rats just bouncing off of the inside of those containers. We use to smoke them out and kill them.55 gallon drums were also use for burning trash and they also made for interesting rat torture chambers when they would get into them.
Kids now a days don't know what fun used to be. We had a blast in the alleys. |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 486
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 1:14 am: | |
^^^^ Haha! Sounds like stories my parents told.
I remember my uncle's house in N. Muskegon and it's alley. It was fun as a kid. |
Drifterlee
Member
Username: Drifterlee
Post Number: 30
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 3:49 am: | |
All these stories make me sad thinking about a Detroit that no longer exists. I also lived in Hamtramck in 1974 to 76 while I was in grad schoool at WSU. I lived on the corner of Mitchell and Casmere - down from the post office. Almost across from the Senate Cafe where Polka Joe and Waltzing Wanda had their radio show. The neighborhood was getting bad back then, but still very livable. My Polish landlady was always trying to fatten me up with yummy Polish food. I loved Worker's Co-Op, later Yeman's Restaurant, for pierogi and gwumpki. My parents moved out about 25 years ago from Riopelle and E. St. Fair, where I grew up. My mother still is upset about it. A few weeks ago I stayed overnight with my folks and my mom and I looked at old photos of the house on Riopelle. Suddenly, I realized what she was missing. It wasn't the house itself - it was the past, and the memories. My great aunt lived in the old family farmhouse on the V where Joseph Campau and Conant met. It's gone now, but it was my favorite place to go. Somehow I think all those old places are still there - at least in our memories they are. |
Jgavrile
Member
Username: Jgavrile
Post Number: 32
Registered: 09-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 10:45 am: | |
Remember us kids wondered where the sheeney kept his horse, so we followed him one afternoon. He drove the horse and wagon South of Highland Park off of Oakland. don't remember the street. Pulled into an alley and there was sort of a barn where he unhitched the horse and out him into and also put the wagon in there.
Came out of the barn all dressed up like a business man, and walked out in front and got into a Cadillac. After that ,when he would come down the alley tooting his horn ,and had those wobbley wheels on the wagon. The horse would have a hat on. We all gave him a lot of crap about being such a phoney. We would sell him stuff on one end of the wagon , while a few other were taking stuff off of the wagon the other side. he was such a phoney ,trying to act like he was this poor guy just making it by collecting all this crap, and selling it to the scrap yard. Sucker was really rich. Don't know where he really lived? |
Jgavrile
Member
Username: Jgavrile
Post Number: 33
Registered: 09-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 11:01 am: | |
Talking about the milkman with horse drawn wagons. The people next door to us got milk from Sealtest. Still in the 50's this Sealtest milkman had a horse drawn wagon. This horse knew the route and the milkman would step off of the wagon with his metal carrying crate with full bottles of milk and he would go up to the house, sometimes in the back, and drop off the milk and collect the empties. The horse would continue to the next house and stop and wait for the milkman to get back on, and move ahead.
The problem with the wagon stopping just in front of our driveway, was that he would usually take a dump right there at the apron to our drive. My Dad at some point would pull in the drive, and of course drive through the horse crap, and park the car up near the porch in front ,and you could smell the horse crap, on the tires, if it was a nice warm day, and you were sitting on the porch. More than one time, if my Dad happened to be around at the proper time, he would hand a shovel to the milkman and tell him to care after his animal, that this was no longer farm country ,but the city. The milkman reluctantly would scrape it up and put it over near the curb. once in a while we would hide behind some bushes and wait for the milk wagon and horse to show up and then hit the ass of the horse with pea shooters and the horse would take off. man that milkman use to get pretty mad,and even called the cops on us a few times. We use to holler at him to buy a Divco, like the rest of the milkmen. Twin Pines, Borden,Browns.etc. No real harm done. it was all in fun back then. |
Jrvass
Member
Username: Jrvass
Post Number: 489
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 11:35 am: | |
^^^^ Ha! LOL!
What is a Divco? We had Twin Pines when I was a kid.
(Message edited by jrvass on February 12, 2008) |
Fury13
Member
Username: Fury13
Post Number: 3895
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 11:46 am: | |
Divco made the ubiquitous milk delivery trucks of the '50s and '60s. Had sort of a bug-eyed front end, as I remember. |
Oldestuff
Member
Username: Oldestuff
Post Number: 69
Registered: 01-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 12:03 pm: | |
We had Wayne Creamery, horse drawn, and we had
sheenys too, I can't remember how often the sheeny man came, but he did bow his horn and all the kids
would rush out to pet the horse. The Milkman's horse was more ornery and he would head back to the creamery when he'd had enough and it was great fun to see the milkman chasing him and ordering him to stop. Hated the residue left behind, the neighborhood dogs would roll in it and then come around for some petting making all the kids run
from them. I still have an alley and it's clean
and well lit and better paved than the street. |
Edziu
Member
Username: Edziu
Post Number: 38
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 12:50 pm: | |
I grew up in Hamtramck and had the good fortune of working for the Hamtramck DPW during the summer when I was in college for a few years.
We started everyday with coffee and donuts at the Workmans coop restaurant on Yemans or the one on Jos. Campau near Holbrook. They were called "Russian restaurant" at that time. Perhaps they were owned by Russians.
After coffee we got into our city vehicles and went to work. I did everything from painting fire hydrants to collecting garbage. In the alleys, rubbish at the time could be stored in old 55 gallon drums which at times were full of rats. Therefore if we suspected a drum might contain rats no one would want to pick it up. WE would kick the can over on its side and the rats would scatter. We swatted the hell out of them with large flat coal shovels occasionally killing one but they were fast. Once the rats left we shoveled the trash by hand into the garbage truck. The city eventually required all garbage cans to be elevated and covered which pretty much eliminated the rats.
I also recall being assigned to the sewer cleaning truck. It was amazing to see the objects we recovered in sewers especially alley sewers. On more than one occasion I can recall finding rusted pistols, knives, bayonets, etc. This was before CSI. If only those alleys could talk.
My favorite job was painting fire hydrants. We walked with 3 cans of paint. Red and white for the top and black for the base. I got to know every street in the city thanks to that job. When we finished one block we moved to the next.
Many, many times older folks who were watching us from the porch would walk over with a bottle of Atlas pop or a cold beer.
Hamtramck was a beautiful place to grow up. |
Jgavrile
Member
Username: Jgavrile
Post Number: 34
Registered: 09-2005
| | Posted on Tuesday, February 12, 2008 - 1:14 pm: | |
I remember that guys used to change their oil over the alley sewer grates. Drive up over the grate and pull the drain plug. The oil would go down in the sewer and the drain plug replaced. put fresh oil in the car.
Yea ,I bet that a lot of guns and contraband were ditched in the alley sewers. Like Oldestuff stuff said, the alleys were in better shape than the streets. |
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